From: hardie@nic.nasa.gov
Message-Id: <199804081504.IAA23267@nic.nasa.gov>
To: ietf-http-ext@w3.org
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1998 08:04:28 -0700 (PDT)
Cc: hardie@nic.nasa.gov
Subject: Mandatory
(Ted)
>The mandatory draft presumes that the mandatory header will be
>processed before any of the two digit headers it names; that
>should be made *really* clear in the draft, as it is a big
>change.
(Henrik)
Why is this? The recipient can still parse the headers without knowing
their semantics. This is exactly the same as for any other unknown header
fields. Whether the mandatory (or optional) header fields are passed before
or afterwards doesn't change this. If you feel that this should be an issue
on the issues list then please let me know.
(Ted,again)
I feel this should be an issue on the issues list. Imagine
that a current end-user system gets a header like:
98-BetaStatus: Release Azure
With the current theory of unordered headers, the end-user
system knows right away whether it needs to process the
message differently in the presence of this header. Under
mandatory, header prefixes are generated on the fly,
so it wont know if 98- corresponds to some extension which
it supports until it processes the Mandatory header. This
means that Mandatory headers must be processed before any
of the two digit headers. This implies that processing of
Mandatory headers isn't unordered, which seems like a big
enough change to me that it should be made very explicit
in the draft.
>End-to-End's current use needs to be re-thought. I think it
>would be much cleaner to have communications meant for
>non-next hop proxies to have a different header, as hop-by-hop
>does. Consumed in the middle does not mean end-to-end and
>planning for either with the same header doesn't make sense
>to me.
(Henrik)
I have two points here: First, I disagree that HTTP defines end-to-end to
mean from the user agent to the origin server. For example, the text in
13.5.1 says
* End-to-end headers, which must be transmitted to the
ultimate recipient of a request or response. End-to-end
headers in responses must be stored as part of a cache
entry and transmitted in any response formed from a
cache entry.
Think of caching, for example. The client sends a set of header fields in
the request that it considers to be end-to-end, however, they may never
reach the origin server because a cache happens to be the "ultimate
recipient".
A difference in Mandatory is that the "ultimate recipient" of a declaration
doesn't have to be the same as for the rest of the message. But this is
already the case with PICS labels and authentication that also can be
handled by other parties than the origin server and the user agent. The
whole point is that it should be transparent - it is for the feature to
define who the appropriate recipient is for non-hop-by-hop extensions.
However, that being said - I don't want to upheld the draft on essentially
a question of terminology and if we can come up with another term than
end-to-end then let's do that. Other names are welcome - or if you can
provide wording that makes the distinction clear. I have added this as an
item on the issues list.
(Ted, again)
I still believe there is a different behavior being defined in
Mandatory than the caching example provides. The proxy cache
behavior is defined by the proxy's need to act for the end host;
in the presence of an end to end header in a request for which
it has a valid entry, the proxy can still reply, on behalf of
the ultimate recipient. It can't itself be the recipient of
an end-to-end header (as an example, on a request for a resource
which it has never before seen, the proxy *must* transmit all
end to end headers to the ultimate recipient).
I believe it is not a good idea to mix the terminology for headers
intended to be consumed by some extension-defined participant
with that for headers which are meant for the ultimate
recipient, (defined either as the origin server or a proxy which
can act for that server by virtue of having seen the request
and response before). I think there should be a distinct name
for those headers which get passed past the first hop but may
be "consumed" prior to the end, as there are some issues specific
to those headers (what happens if no one in the chain removes it,
for example).
(Ted)
>The layered approach in 5.0 seems to imply that the last
>step is to apply the semantics of the method without M-;
>since that is not what is meant, the language needs to
>be tightened to indicate that the semantics may be derived
>from the base method, but they should not be assumed.
(Henrik)
Good point. I would be inclined to remove the point entirely as it is
really only the extension that can determine whether this is the right
behavior. Do you agree - or do you have a proposed wording? I have added
this as an issue.
(Ted, again)
I think getting rid of it will work, and I agree only the
extension can determine the right behavior. Some language
to warn people not to use M-PUT for DELETE is probably
appropriate, but this probably isn't the right placement
for it.
(Henrik)
It is important that people can use registered names without being forced
to use full URIs. The current scheme allows us to transition from a
unregistered name to a registered one. It doesn't matter whether IANA has
multiple roots. Relative URIs are really just names within the IANA URI
space. A clarifying paragraph could be useful in section 8. I have added
this as an issue.
(Ted, again)
Maybe instead of saying "relative URIs", you can use the
term "IANA-registered tokens". You may want to think about
what set of IANA registries you want though. I assume you would
want MIME, registered media features (when they exist), and
possibly registered schemas. I believe that set would give
you unique names without having to mention which registry
something came from, but I'm not sure that would be true across
all IANA registries.
(Ted)
>In Section 6.0, the spec says that a host can send a resource
>with a manadatory extension without knowing if the requesting
>user can deal with the extension. That strikes me as pretty
>bad design, as it wastes a *lot* of bits on the wire. Given
>the number of "You must have X to read this site" sites, I'm
>afraid that it might be a fairly common case that people would
>pre-emptively require extensions. An "extension required"
>response followed by a new request strikes me as a better bet.
(Henrik)
They already do - servers ask you to download plug-ins, scripts etc. It
really depends on the ubiquity of the extension in question. If it is a
well-known extension saving a round trip is significant. If not then the
extra bytes on the wire may be wasted. An extension framework has to
support both.
(Ted, again)
Yes, servers already do ask users to download plug-ins etc, and
some implementations start sending large resources before
checking the user knows if it really can handle the MIME type. I
think this is an artifact of the Accept: */* debacle, and I believe
it is broken. Mandatory gives a chance to fix it (especially
in combination with Options), and I think we should take it.
Thanks for your patience with this long message,
regards,
Ted Hardie
NASA NIC